Arts Abroad

BASEL, Switzerland—Peter Handke first came to public notice six years ago when, in his narly twenties, he shook up a Princeton meeting of the German Writers Associa tion “Gruppe 47” with a widely publicized blast against what he charged was a “lit erary parade.” At the time, Handke had pub lished one un successful, rather dull novel, “Die Hornissen” (“The Hornets”). His youth, his Beatle hairdo were then more noticeable than his achievements. By creating a deliberate scandal, young Handlke seemed likely to be come a literary Showman rather than a powerful new writer. Yet quite the oppo site has happened. Within six years, the working‐class boy from the Austrian pro vincial capital of Graz, who was raised by the Jesuits and studied law, has become a highly considered best selling novelist and an effec tive playwright as well, such as with his latest “Ritt Uber den Bodensee” (“The Ride Over Lake Constance”).

The title refers to a Ger man poem all schoolboys have had to learn, about a “courier” who unknowingly crosses the frozen lake on horseback, learns of the peril only after his safe arrival on the other side when he drops dead from retrospective fright. For Handke, language is like this treacherous thin ice, which may hold, and yet may not.

All of Handke sells: Even a volume of his miscellane ous writings—on sports, on books, essays, short stories —brought out by Hermann Hesse's publisher, Suhrkamp, instantly sold many more copies than any other liter ary work. A career that be gan with an arrogant public outburst and an unwarranted claim to authority has led to the maturation of a pro foundly interesting intellec tual and poet, of a “trend setter” not because he is the fashion but because of genu ine achievement.

Although he comes from Austria, Handke has lived mainly in West Germany and more recently in Paris. Ger man publishers, German stages have been associated with his success. When his famous play, “Kaspar”— about a mute boy learning to use speech who is “manipu lated,” terrorized by the commanding logic of sen tences and clichés — was taken to Paris by a Heidei berg troupe, the performance significantly took place at the German Goethe Institut and not the Austrian cultural center.

Handke can seem sure and rude as well as shy, accord ing to mood and moment. He rejects some acknowledged German masters such as Goethe or Brecht and likes to think of himself as being in the Austro‐Hungarian tra dition of Kafka, of the phi losopher Wittgenstein and of the novelist‐playwright Oedon von Horvath, whose sarcas tic plays are now—deserved ly — very poptilar in West Germany.

Handke has written also about political issues, such as the prosecution of leftist students, in a way that demonstrates his logic and legal training, even though he despises the notion of “committed literature,” quot ing Wittgenstein to the effect that “it is like pouring water into a full glass—it just over flows.”

If his “authorities” all come from the Austrian and not the German past, this may be for reasons quite apart from his own geo graphical background: Hand ke is preocctipied, even ob sessed, with the phendmenon of language, with the way in which man becomes its vehicle instead of being its master. In his last plays he treats every kind of action and ceremony just as words, although they should be con sidered with the greatest at tention.

They are a routine and it lusion whose significance is put to the test when they are interrupted. Such preoccupa tions are closer to Austrian neo‐positivlsm and linguistics than to German “historical” thought. And Handke, too, relies in his plays on immedi ate sensual moments., of comedy rather than on “deep meanings,” again more in a Viennese theatrical tradition than a German.

Last year, his novel “Die Angst des Torwarts vor dem Elfmeter” (“The Fear, of the Goalkeeper Before the Eleven‐Meter Run”) was not about sports as the title would imply, but a nouveau, roman related to the Robbe Grillet style: A young mur derer who happens to be a professional soccer player loses touch with the words, and witnesses during his escape the gradual decom position of their meaning. That novel, too, became an unexpected best‐seller.

Handke is disliked by a large part of the intellectual New Left. A whole issue of the influential left‐wing quar terly, “Kursbuch,” edited, by the committed poet Hans Magnus Enzenberger, was de voted to attacks, on Handke. Other publications have tried to debunk the writer by point ing up hit mannerisms and the, fact that he does not take Marxism seriously as a philos ophy.

Handke has written some radio plays that use sounds more than words, with the aim of divorcing the conven tional meaning of a sound from its immediate reality, for a shock treatment de signed to draw attention, to what really “is up.”

As a playwright, the author had started out with :“anti plays” that tried to involve the audience directly. One of them was called “Publikums beschimpfung” (“insulting the audience”) and was just that., The insults hurled by four agile actors in a ballet‐like movement were taken as en tertainment by most German audiences, but not so at Bar celona, where during a recent performance the public shout ed back insults at the actors. One wondered which audi ence behaved more in accord ance with the Handke code.

All Handke's writing is polarized between a logical urge and a musical sense of modern rhythm. Handke lis tens continually to pop rec ords and every kind of new music and has transferred some of its effects into his writing style.

A few months ago, the writer came to Basel for the opening of one of his plays. Several spectators booed and hissed. Thereupon Handke stepped onto the stage, clad in black, his brown unkempt hair flowing and wearing dark glasses, his face with its thin mustache over full lips looking like a mask. What were the objections, he asked politely. He then listened to angry outbursts and argued calmly, convincingly, as long as anybody in the thinning audience cared to carry on.

When he recites his work before a public, Handke fasci nates with an unemotional, monotonous, deadpan voice. Again he has made a style out of what he feels is a logical mode of behavior. His work is, coherent and at the same time in full evolution through his testing of the valid means of expression.

He seems at the same time obvious and unexpected—be cause he has the impish Witt gensteinian way of using the power of logic. His work and new fame are altogether one of the most interesting phe nomena in the new German literature.

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